Wednesday, March 18, 2009

WHAT THE NIGHT CAN DO

Here's me trying to get into the Four Corners Monument at 9:30 pm. I would have leaped the fence but I had no idea how far from this gate it was. Oh well, screw your arbitrary yet compelling terrestrial intersection !

That was in the middle of a very surreal drive away from Page, Arizona yesterday. I have a meeting in Colorado City tomorrow, so I thought I'd see what was between the two points, expecting to rest in Farmington, NM. My evening was two hours across the Navajo Nation, and it was beautiful, but clearly moving away from the majesty of canyon country. There are only very small towns from Page to where I am now, and as night came, I got a strange feeling. I didn't know anything about this territory, I saw a sign saying I was leaving Navajo Nation, and then I was in I Have No Idea Netherworld Near Four States Simultaneously Land.

Now, I've been living in the woods, deep in the woods, in strange neighborhoods, in sketchy parks, in very black nights and very bright ones, I've been woken by alien police, and I've heard the cries of strange beasts, but I have yet to feel the least bit nervous or frightened until last night. There was absolutely no reason, but all of a sudden the car behind me was clearly Satan's charioteer ready to eat me, slowing and speeding exactly the way I was, refusing to pass, until he just disappeared and I was on the road for hours without another car in either direction. I ran through The Hills Have Eyes, The Mist, any number of twisted road stories, like when the nude woman covered in blood runs hysterically at your car in the lights a hundred feet ahead, who you of course HAVE to stop for but is obviously either bait set by the locals who will kidnap you, then grandma skins you and serves you to the family AFTER they've all raped you, or she's a horrible demon who stays totally silent until you've been trapped in a loop of driving forever and she turns into a derisive 95 year old naked woman, OR she's actually escaping from some form of monster which you must now be devoured by.

And speaking of family rape, as the night grew longer and Farmington approached, all these little mining towns started sprinkling the freeway's edges forcing you to slow down. By the time I reached Farmington, I was convinced this was the anal rape and/or serial killer capital of the west (just like northern Florida is in the east) and the night fears just worsened. The worst is the person in the backseat feeling. I didn't stop for six hours or so, so the only way a person could possibly have been inside the car behind me was from teleporting, which would have made it really cool. Then I thought about the logic of the person behind you fear, and in every scenario it's only the creep-out discovery phase that's troubling, I mean it's either some deranged person who will kill you by strangulation which will in turn kill him, or a robber, which is incredibly boring and not scary. It would have to be a deep breathing mental patient whose intentions are totally unpredictable that could sustain the creep factor. Well this took me right out of the fright mode, until I looked up and saw ... (to be continued)